Currently, conventional solar cell manufacturing techniques typically start with very high quality single crystal substrates such as silicon in order to produce a solar cell having high efficiency. Otherwise, if a non-single crystal substrate is used, then the efficiency of the solar cell decreases. However, there are disadvantages associated with this type of conventional solar cell manufacturing technique.
For example, one disadvantage is that the demand for high quality single crystal silicon substrates for manufacturing solar cells is currently so large that these substrates are in short supply. As such, manufacturing solar cells can be very costly, and could occasionally be impossible, as the demands for solar cells based on single crystal substrates increases, due to the scarcity of the high quality single crystal silicon substrates.
Therefore, it is desirable to address one or more of the above issues.